DonRocks

Somewhat off-topic, but has anyone heard how much corn costs in Tampa right now? I've heard it's a Buccaneer.

[Moved from DC & DelMarVa into Food Media and News]

Underscoring a disconnect between perception and reality.

Joe, we can respectfully disagree, right? I had this dish last week, and while the mussels were excellent, even outstanding, I found it to be a microcosm of what I've experienced at BlackSalt: very fresh seafood that tends to be well-prepared but ultimately succumbing to heavyhanded saucing. I found the feta cheese in this dish offputting, for example, although I agree with you about the preserved lemon being a wonderful addition. I could go through various examples of strange ingredients in the sauces: a turmeric(?)-laden aioli with the salty bourride which was chock full of superb seafood, a honey-based sauce which overwhelmed and ruined an otherwise decent (but very expensive) opah belly sashimi; but I could also come up with an example of how poorly-prepared seafood ruined an otherwise excellent saucing (the overcooked $31 lobster dish in a wonderfully subtle and elegant sauce which was brought to life by what seemed to be vanilla. I didn't really want to express an opinion on BlackSalt until I had at least one more visit there, but I do think some of this early enthusiasm needs to be kept in check, especially in light of the glaring service problems which will hopefully be resolved in the near future. By the way, there are many positives I've seen at this interesting restaurant as well: a dozen raw oysters went back from the bar to the kitchen, and I watched one of the chefs carefully inspect each-and-every-one before allowing the order to go out to the table. The $4-5 small plates I've tried have all been really good. They have a good, fairly-priced Cotes-du-Rhone rouge (yes, rouge) by the glass that goes well with many items on their menu. My early impression of the desserts is that they are terrific - and what great cookies they have! Let me close by saying that I like BlackSalt very much for what it is, and will happily return in the near future, ordering carefully when I do. It seems to be a fantastic addition to that neighborhood, and one more reason why Washington DC has indeed become a great dining town. Cheers, Rocks.

Then steer clear of the oyster shooters.

Saturday evening I was having dinner at the bar at Restaurant Eve, and at one point I saw Todd walking into the bar area towards me, shaking his head, with a shellshocked look on his face. "Do you mind if I start a thread on obnoxious customers who walk into restaurants?" "Not at all," I replied. "but it should go on General Food Topics, since it isn't specific to DC & DelMarVa." "Oh, yes it is," he said. "It's happening right here, right now, and we're going to be slammed on eGullet tomorrow." Todd then proceded to tell me what was going on: a fourtop of rude diners, who announced on OpenTable that they were "from eGullet," had come into the restaurant, and were having dinner as we spoke. They were apparently determined to have a bad time, because they started disparaging the restaurant almost immediately, saying loudly to the table next to them that there was no way this restaurant was going to live up to the hype, and just LOOK at that piece of birthday cake that went by - all it is ... is a piece of birthday cake. The table near them had already complained to management about their obnoxious behavior, and apparently after they left, a second table complained about them as well. "I put their red wine on ice by mistake," Todd said, with his head in his hands. 'Nothing we do is good enough for them. We're over there trying to salvage their evening, but it's too late, I can tell.' I was there, in real time, hearing about this train wreck as it was occurring. When the fourtop was pointed out to me, I did not recognize the diners, and so I did not go up and say hello. And although I cannot say what happened for sure in the bistro that evening, I did indeed see how shaken up Todd was by this, and felt badly for him. Proud to be a low-maintenance diner, Rocks.

I agree as well. banco appears to be more than happy with the resolution of all this, and Jimmy was magnanimous and gracious in following up here with his reply. I think Café Atlantico comes out of this looking like a winner, and I'm going to be certain to reward them in the very near future with my business because of the conscientious way they handled this situation. Cheers, Rocks. [note to banco: if you're worried about having used real names, you can always go back and edit them out of your posting so they aren't archived until the end of time - I can help you with this if you'd like - just let me know.]

[This is, in fact, a great topic for its own thread, and I'm going to split it off into the General Food Topics forum tomorrow. Please feel free to keep the discussion going, but if your posts "disappear" tomorrow, it's only because I moved them over there for the entire site to discuss.]

Cathal, Welcome! It's nice to have you onboard, and dinner was awesome last night. By the way, Cathal will be cooking at this event [if you go to the eGullet main page, the upcoming calendar events are down at the bottom]. Cheers! Rocks.

Breaking news Josh Raynolds, for thirteen years the national sales representative for the great importer Neal Rosenthal of Rosenthal Wine Merchant, will be leaving his post and taking a key position with Steve Tanzer at The International Wine Cellar. Josh is a member of eGullet, and one of the funniest, smartest people in the industry. He's leaving one class act to join another. Congratulations, Josh! Cheers! Rocks. P.S. Can ya flip me some Carillon Bienvenue before ya go?

Hi Chef Corelli! In my long and checkered wine career, I've had the good fortune to drink Ramonet Montrachet, Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne, Donnhoff Oberhauser Brucke Eiswein, Trimbach Clos Saint-Hune, Haut-Brion Blanc, Chave Hermitage Vin de Paille, Chateau d'Yquem, Krug Clos du Mesnil... ...but in my lifetime, I'm certain that the greatest white wine I've ever had was a carafe of Cinque Terre Bianco at an outdoor cafe in Spezia, served with a gnocchi al pesto, after a long day of hiking on goat trails by the sea. What do you make of this? Cheers! Rocks.

Stars are for people that wish to be one. Rocks.

["Enjoying your Sunday, Don?" "Uh, no." Everyone please read this thread which details eGullet's new policy about social events. Please limit any and all discussion of the new policy to this thread only - since this is a sitewide policy, it is not appropriate to discuss it in this forum and there's nothing I can do about it anyway. That said, DO feel free to PM me, as always, while I continue to figure out how to best process this new policy. Thanks much, Rocks. (feeling like the girl standing behind the rental-car counter getting screamed at)]

Alert to Joe H: I stopped in daSto yesterday, and they had an In-N-Out Burger T-shirt for sale. As an aside, I had brunch at Colorado Kitchen yesterday, and tried to slink in unnoticed. However, midway through the meal, my server came up to the table, said "this is from Chef," and put a small, white plate in front of me. On the plate was ... a teabag.

It seems fitting that my January, 2005 Restaurant Week would begin at Palena and end at Cashion's, two restaurants that did not participate but still turned out amazing meals at the same prices as those who did. Palena deservedly gets lots of attention on this forum, and I've often wondered why Cashion's doesn't get just as much. In fact, in terms of quality, price, and solid, innovative cooking rooted in tradition, I cannot think of any restaurant in Washington DC more comparable to Palena than Cashion's. I'm convinced that Adams Morgan scares people away from Cashion's, and yet valet parking is only $5.00 at the restaurant, so that's no longer an acceptable excuse. The wines at Cashion's are a strength, and you cannot possibly go wrong with a glass of 2000 Pommard from Voillot for $8.00 (they also have a bring-your-own corkage policy, although I don't remember how much they charge). Look at this wonderful meal: Ann's charcuterie plate is fascinating, consisting of a housemade rabbit terrine, a druggingly delicious turkey ballotine, and a little pile of nutmeg-y pork rillettes served with a deviled egg and fresh, interesting greens lightly bathed in truffle vinaigrette. Three perfectly cooked pieces of crispy sauteed veal brains, served piping hot, are placed atop a refreshing frisée & salsify salad with an appropriately acidic lemon-caper dressing. A half-avocado is hollowed and stuffed with tiny wedges of pink grapefruit, and makes a fine transition from savory into dessert. And then the red wine pear sorbet, made in-house, is one of the most important sorbets in the area. Served at the correct temperature, it comes across as vinous, granular, complex and even whimsical, as it's accompanied by a saxaphone-shaped sugar cookie with "Cashion's" scripted into it. Every one of these plates is between $8 and $11, and if you're going for the first time, please don't forget the mind-bending spinach and ricotta ravioli with Tuscan meat sauce. All this, plus one of the singularly great pieces of bar art in all the world. You'll just have to go for yourself to have a look, and when you do, you'll probably see Ann as well, working away in the kitchen of this wonderful restaurant - one of the best places to enjoy a meal in all of Washington DC. Cheers, Rocks. P.S. I also had Sunday brunch at Cashion's a few weeks ago, and it's one of the best casual brunches in town. Not inexpensive, but good value for the money.

I think Greg's posting should be regarded as a model of intelligent, measured discourse and respectful, thought-provoking dissent. Just a couple of comments: It wasn't a "snap judgment" so much as an observation. The link to Greg's interesting posting is here, and it's a thread worth reading. I happen to disagree with his premise, and certainly the conclusion in the final sentence, but in no way does that mean it isn't a valid or serious viewpoint. It's actually not an open kitchen, at least not for the hot dishes. I remember craning my neck on the way out, trying to look through the glass windows of the kitchen doors, wishing I could sneak back and take a walk through, and wondering if I'd find other things similar to the large can of Dole pineapple that was sitting on a shelf where they make the desserts. It was indeed a strange amalgam, but when you dine at restaurants several hundred times a year, and you're testing one for the very first time, you sometimes come up with odd cross-sections of dishes, in this case, two apps, three entrees, two vegetarian dishes, two seafood dishes, one meat dish, one cold dish, one mixed dish, three hot dishes. It isn't so much a search for a balanced meal as it is seeing what the kitchen can do with various different plates. This type of motley assortment doesn't always make for the best dining experience, especially at a restaurant such as this, but it can provide a good idea of a kitchen's strengths and weaknesses on a given evening. Your point is well-taken, but given that they don't deliver this dish because it doesn't transport well, I assume that the fried fish is supposed to be placed atop the salad immediately after being fried, and then rushed to the table while still hot. It arrived barely above room temperature, which perhaps alludes more to the service problems rather than the actual execution. Still, I have never before tried Yum Pla Duk Fu, and have no experience to draw on when it comes to this particular dish. The Shrimp Potpourri is listed as one of eleven dishes under "54's Recommendations," which includes the Sator Shrimp you discussed. It is described on the menu as "Shrimp, cellophane noodles with special house sauce served in a clay pot." I have eaten what is virtually the same dish at Thai Square several times, called "Potpourri Shrimp With Bean Threads," and described on their menu as "Giant shrimp, bean threads, shiitake mushrooms cooked to order with special sauce in a clay pot." As for the Five Spices Stewed Duck, it was listed as a special that evening, but one of the eleven dishes in the "54's Recommendations" section is "Five Spices Stewed Pork," which is described exactly the same way as the duck, and I knew that the saucing would be identical. They also list a "54's Spicy Roasted Duck" in that same section on the regular menu, and so I was under the impression that the duck would be a reasonable substitute for the pork, which in turn could be compared with Thai Square's Pig Knuckles Stew. You didn't mention the Green Curry Jae, which is a standard Thai dish of vegetables in green curry sauce (with tofu). This was ordered to compare with Thai Square's Green Curry With Assorted Vegetables which I've had numerous times in the past. And so you have the method behind the amalgam: all dishes were chosen carefully and thoughtfully, not necessarily to create the ultimate "high wire act" dining experience you mentioned in your fine posting, but to see what this kitchen is capable of in different types of preparations, to compare it with well-known comparable dishes down the street at Thai Square, and to provide a mixture of traditional Thai standards and dishes the menu advertises as recommendations. Cheers, Rocks.

Awesome! Let's hope he looks like his mom!

On Tuesday, I attended a small lunch for Judy Havemann - a chance for several of us to meet and welcome her to her new position of Washington Post Food Editor, a permanent position that Judy officially assumed this week. I was immensely impressed by Judy. She is extremely intelligent (a Nieman Fellow from Harvard), charming and disarmingly without pretense. Her outlook for the Food section is global in scope, reflecting a very different demographic in the Washington area than existed twenty years ago, and in keeping with the international importance of the newspaper as a whole. The implementation of this is clearly going to be a work in progress: Judy impressed us all by eagerly (and genuinely) soliciting opinions about the types of things we'd like to see in the Food section, and I'm certain that she will spend the upcoming weeks and months doing more of the same. Things will evolve, and the picture of where things are going should become clearer in the near future. "Everyone reads eGullet," she told me, and I'm certain that all constructive feedback on this forum will be read, appreciated and incorporated into Judy's open-minded and expansive vision of where she wants to take the Washington Post Food section. Welcome Judy!

Having been to Tacuba, I ask myself why Todd would devote an entire column of City Paper to it, and my guess is that it's the investigative journalist in him that decided to chronicle a moment in time. He pegged Tacuba with his article, in particular the part about it being destined for expansion, and I suspect as more of them crop up in other areas like little strip-mall whack-a-moles (that's mole the Mexican sauce, not mole the subterranean mammal), we'll look back on his article and say "yep." Perhaps confirmed by Linda Roth in her January, 2005 issue of "The Latest Dish," where she mentions that Tacuba is apparently set to "roll them out nationally, working with franchise development company, Fransmart." So here is my question to you, gentle readers: What does Tacuba have in common with a feral hog? Answer: they're both Rushin' bores (Russian boars) that will eventually spread to different parts of the country. All together now... 1 ! 2 !! 3 !!! <YAWN> Rocks.

I think Tom might be short for Thomas. Rearrange again. ← I shat some steam.

I'm having trouble reconciling the following: In Tom's Dining Guide book (from 2003), his review of Addie's says, and I quote, "Even striptease joints serve calamari these days...." My question is, how does he know this? Furthermore, the letters in "Tom Sietsema" can be rearranged to read "It's some meat!" This is troubling, Rocks.

I think the second one is subtitled "Turning a Bundt into a Home Run." (sorry) Rocks.

I ... must ... control ... myself .... (Should have paid her to eat a clam - then it could have been known as The Blair Ipswich Project) Which is perhaps why my meal at Addie's last week was decent, but nothing special. Does anyone know who is in charge of what these days at Jeff Black's four restaurants? Color me prudent, but I prefer to err on the side of long-term skepticism when a restaurant group goes from two to four restaurants in just a few short months. Will he still be in the kitchen in 2006? I feel an almost urgent need to go to Black's Alt now, while the gittin' is still good. Stay tuned... RockSalt.

I'm a little surprised this thread has been around for so long and that nobody has asked The Authority.

"I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde.” These words by Robert Louis Stevenson reflect the most recent meals I had at El Pueblo and Straits of Malaya (Straits on a Sunday), two particularly cruel examples of how it’s possible for a restaurant to seemingly fall off a cliff overnight. Dinner at Bangkok 54 was the most disappointing meal I’ve had in weeks if not months, because given all the recent raves about it by people I have confidence in, it never once occurred to me that it would be anything short of great. The first thing I noticed about Bangkok 54 was how many non-Asians were dining there. When I got up midway through the meal and took a lap around the dining room, I counted 18 tables with customers, and 15 out of the 18 did not have a single Asian diner. That alone is enough to sound alarm bells clanging, but in this case it could perhaps be fallout from the recent Washington Post review. Service was haphazard and seemingly random: our server was friendly, but twice during the meal she took so long to respond that I needed to flag her down. At one point I had to ask the woman pouring water to fill a request made ten minutes beforehand because I couldn’t find the server. Out of three entrees ordered, the first two came out together from the kitchen, and the third did not appear for a good five minutes afterward. The Green Papaya Salad was the highlight of the meal by a good margin, and was the only dish of the evening worth finishing. It had backbone and character, and is worth a repeat visit or a carryout order for this alone. But contrast that with the Yum Pla Duk Fu salad, which was unsauced shredded lettuce, plain unchopped peanuts, slices of unseasoned raw onion, and something that was supposed to be “fried fish,” but tasted more like fried dryer lint, or perhaps more accurately, fried nothing, as there was seemingly nothing there except the shreds of fried fry. The texture and flavor was slightly mitigated when an accompanying bowl of sauce was spooned atop, but the dish was simply inedible by anyone not engaged in masochism. They apparently don’t offer this dish on their delivery menu because they say it doesn’t transport well, but the fried fish strands arrived very close to room temperature anyway. The Yum Pla Duk Fu was dismissed as an aberration, but as I was soon to discover, the warning had just been sounded. How can anyone mess up a Green Curry Jae, which is described as “Fried tofu, Thai eggplant, mixed vegetables and sweet basil in a green coconut-curry sauce?” Not only was the sauce sugared down, but the vegetables were bland and lifeless, the wedges of tofu were lukewarm, and the entire dish had a feeling of being “assembled” at the last minute rather than having any depth or persistence. And yet the Shrimp Potpourri - shrimp, cellophane noodles with special house sauce served in a clay pot – was just as bad, the “special house sauce” tasting like watered-down fish sauce with sugar in it, and the “clay pot” being a cheap service vessel rather than anything adding to the dish. The shrimp themselves tasted like the frozen shrimp you buy at Whole Foods by-the-scoop, overcooked in a water-based medium so they were tough and bland, and added at the last minute - there was no integration with the rest of the dish. But the worst plate of the evening was the special Five Spices Stewed Duck, which remains the most disastrous duck dish I have had in recent times, the half-duck served at room temperature and chopped up atop yet another sugared-down, watery, thin broth. Literally two bites of this expensive special were eaten, and the rest was left because it was simply not enjoyable, the duck being cold, soggy and uninteresting, and the sauce being westernized to the point of condescension. At the end of the meal, two different servers came up and could not understand why I didn’t want to take the dish home. I cannot reconcile the glowing reviews of people with my own experience. To put this in perspective, I’ve now had only one meal at Bangkok 54, and perhaps twenty meals (between dine-in and take-out) at Thai Square down the street. Though Thai Square hasn’t had a 100%-success rate, I have never had anything there that was as bad as the four worst things I had at Bangkok 54. An off night? Perhaps so, but there would have to be some pretty fundamental changes that transpired before this food could even be considered merely good. I wanted to love it, Rocks.